weapons instructions, and the special tools needed to complete the arming process. A senior maintenance officer and an officer of the RTB unit stood beside each aircraft, next to the squat electronic arming code apparatus, a rectangular metal box with a ten-digit keypad, connected to the nose of each bomb by a snaking blue cable.
I received my arming code envelope and opened it immediately, as per standing orders. Now I climbed into the cockpit, but did not connect my ejection harness. Instead, I warmed up my instruments and tuned my radio to the regimental operations frequency. Finally I tore open the red plastic seal of my arming envelope and read the word: Zvezdachot, “Star Counter.” This was the Secret mission designator. In a moment, this word was repeated over the radio net by the regimental ops officer.
“Ponyal,” I replied. “Four nine seven is standing by to receive.”
One by one, the other strike pilots checked in. I held my arming code card in my left hand, with my mechanical pencil poised in my right. This was a solemn moment. The State was trusting me with its most delicate secrets.
“Be prepared to receive,” the regimental headquarters called.
Thirty seconds later the number sequence began:
“3 5 7 4 9 6 3 7 5,” I carefully wrote, centering each digit below the similar digits printed on my code card.
Now I subtracted the line of lower digits I’d just received from the upper numbers, matching each pair in its vertical column. If the results had produced any 9s or 0s, the code transmitted by the regiment would have been false and invalid. I had neither 9s nor 0s. If any top number had been smaller than the number below, I would have followed our cryptographic procedure and added ten to the upper number.
Down on the apron, the RTB officer showed me his own code card, which he had tallied, using his own separate communications links leading eventually back in an unbroken line to the Central Committee in Moscow. The vital dual, separate-channel code sequence was now complete. My code had been transmitted by the military, his by the civilian leadership. It was time to arm the bomb.
While the RTB officer watched intently, the maintenance captain entered each of the ten digits on the code apparatus keypad. He punched the wide enter key after each digit. When all ten had been completed, a green light flashed and the words “Code Entered Unblocked” appeared in a narrow Plexiglas window. Had he made a mistake, he would have been able to correct the problem once; any further attempt would have rendered the bomb inoperable.
As I climbed back into the cockpit, I considered the flexibility and flawless security of this system once more. Neither a renegade general nor a deranged politician could commit Soviet forces to a nuclear attack. Yet, the arming sequence was completely practical and worked well, even under realistic field conditions.
All nuclear-capable fighter regiments practiced loading their bombs at least twice a month. This process was always conducted at night, inside a hangar, in order to avoid American spy satellites. During one such training exercise at Vaziani, I explained to a young weapons officer from the RTB that our superiors had never revealed to the pilots just how powerful the RN-40 actually was. I felt we had a right to know.
“The yield is slightly over thirty kilotons,” he said casually. The young man wore plain dark coveralls, with no rank on his epaulets or branch insignia on his sleeve. From his tone, he could have been discussing the performance of a truck engine.
When I commented on the well-conceived arming process, he went on to tell me some fascinating information.
“Soviet forces adopted this system in the 1970s,” he said, stroking the gray flanks of the practice bomb. “It’s the Americans’ own system, but we’ve added some improvements.”
He must have noted my confused expression. “The American methods,” he added, “we obtained from several U.S. Air Force ‘guests,’ nuclear-qualified pilots our fraternal Socialist comrades in Vietnam provided us during that Imperialist war.”
At the time, I had not wanted to consider the methods the GRU had used to extract such information from professional military pilots. This was a cruel side of war that I hated, but I knew the Americans would do the same to me if I were to parachute into the hands of one of their “fraternal” Imperialist allies. All that could be said was that the unfortunate American pilots had probably died painlessly soon after they had revealed this vital information.
Or maybe not. I had grown up watching television reports of the endless anti-war demonstrations on the streets and university campuses of America. Clever Soviet intelligence officers might have manipulated images of the demonstrations to persuade American prisoners to remain voluntarily in the Soviet Union, convincing these battered, vulnerable pilots that they would be imprisoned as traitors if they ever returned to their country.
It was not surprising that Soviet interrogators had used whatever methods necessary to extract secret nuclear weapon arming procedures from captured American pilots. Prisoners of war were held in contempt by the Soviet military. During my years at the Armavir Academy and the constant training in the regiments, I was never instructed in the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Never; I didn’t even know it existed. No Soviet soldier or officer was ever told that the Imperialist enemy had signed binding international treaties guaranteeing humane treatment of prisoners. I first learned about the Geneva Convention during my debriefings in America. Throughout years of Air Force service, I was constantly taught that my oath of duty to the Motherland bound me from ever surrendering, as long as I was physically capable of fighting. And then, we were told, it was better to use the last bullet or grenade for suicide than to surrender. Many young Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan had chosen death rather breaking this sacred oath.
My strike force took off in two-plane elements beginning at 0921 hours, exactly three minutes after the escorts. This timing was vital. Our AWACS killers were flying at the extreme limit of their combat radius. We could not enter the wide circle of AWACS radar coverage, and betray our presence, until the AWACS was destroyed. So we flew our doglegs to the north and west, as briefed, then my strike force dropped to the deck, and the escorts fanned out above, on either side of our route.
Captain Petrukhin was not hesitant about leading us across the sooty brown desert at .9 Mach, only 250 feet above the sand. This was even more visually spectacular than the supersonic run we had flown two days before. At this altitude the ground below sailed by in a crazy blur. Twice Petrukhin bounced us up to 400 feet to clear massive power lines. Then we were down on the deck again. At transonic speed, well below the radar horizon of the Hawk defense belt ahead, we were invisible, but closing fast on the enemy.
Then my earphones sounded with the unmistakable terse radio calls of the dogfight unfolding between 9,000 and 30,000 feet above us. Our escorts were engaging the enemy combat air patrol. I could hear the calls of “Rubege odin,” quickly followed by “Pusk … Pusk. Launch … Launch.”
Obviously the enemy air cover had been caught off guard, and this probably meant their AWACS had been destroyed by our “back door” attack.
I followed the lead element, half a mile ahead, glancing occasionally in my mirror to make sure my wingman, Andrei, hung behind my right wingtip. My briefing notes told me I was three minutes from the Hawk zone and nine minutes from weapons release. In the next ninety seconds my SRZO threat receiver whined and blinked alarmingly, a real New Year’s tree of colored lights. But the enemy sweeps were ineffective at this altitude and speed. A minute later we were past the Hawks’ effective range.
Now it was time to prepare the weapon. On my weapons-control panel, I flipped the ordnance switch to spetz, and verified it was centered. Then I selected tormos, “drag,” which meant the weapon’s retarding parachute had been armed. In the low-altitude toss-up bombing mode, I would release the weapon in a highspeed loop back over the target. The parachute would slow the bomb until I sped away on afterburner from the immediate lethal blast and radiation kill circle. Next I depressed the lock-on button on the inner throttle knob and a clear white circle appeared on my HUD, perched atop my straight vector line.
Two minutes to release. I carefully verified that my oxygen system was on 100 percent, emergency pressure, and that the outside airflow was completely closed. No one wanted to breathe a mouthful of plutonium dust. Next I dropped the smoked-glass flash filter on my HUD and lowered my dark helmet visor. As I was preparing my cockpit, the other three elements split away, and I eased my aircraft onto a heading of 195 degrees true and climbed to 600 feet.
Suddenly I saw the target, a small shed of rusty metal sheeting with a squat antenna tower, centered in the middle of a six-hundred-foot white circle painted directly on the gravel pavement of the desert. I saw Andrei peel away on his own target off my right wing. Now I concentrated on the HUD as the seconds to pitch-up and weapons
